Remembering December 17: Repeal of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act

The Chinese American experience, with its trials and triumphs, comes to mind
every December 17, the anniversary of the 1943 repeal by Congress of the
Chinese Exclusion Act of May 6, 1882. With only a few exceptions, this
law barred any Chinese from immigrating to the United States, and marked
the first time U.S. immigration policy singled out citizens of a particular
nation for wholesale discrimination. NOTE
2 This dark period in U.S. history was born out of the widely
held belief that the Chinese were incapable of “assimilation” into American
society. Nevertheless, despite more than 60 years of systematic disenfranchisement,
Chinese continued to migrate to the United States because it remained
a country where they could find employment and fulfill many of their dreams.

Today, the United States is
experiencing a period of sizable immigration from China. According to
the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 664,812 Chinese immigrated
to the United States from 1990 through 2000. NOTE
3 Chinese and other Asian immigrants are now often called
the “Model Minority” because their children quickly attain relatively
high levels of education (21.6 percent of Chinese Americans had a bachelors
degree in 1990 vs. 13.1 percent of the total U.S. population) and relatively
high incomes (the median income of Chinese Americans was $41,316 in
1989 vs. $35,225 for the total U.S. population). NOTE
4 Even so, new challenges face the Chinese community as it
seeks to expand its involvement in the American political process and
to assist large numbers of new immigrants to integrate into U.S. society.
In addition, the problems associated with human smugglers, or “snakeheads,”
have grown to serious proportions. While the Chinese community has made
great strides in overcoming racial discrimination and poverty over the
decades, obstacles remain.

The First Wave of
Immigrants to the “Golden Mountain”

There are records of Chinese
immigrants in California as early as 1815, and Chinese students were
brought by missionaries to Massachusetts for schooling in 1847. However,
the first large wave of Chinese immigration to the United States began
during the California gold rush in 1848. NOTE
5 The immigrants themselves referred to the United States
as the “Golden Mountain.” In the years that followed, the Chinese -
especially those coming from the Canton area of south China - worked
in mining, construction, and the building of the intercontinental railroad.
By the 1870s there were over 63,000 Chinese immigrants in the country.
Although most lived in California, many had moved eastward into cities
such as New York.

However, the United States
suffered through a depression in the 1870s that was particularly severe
in California. This economic downturn fed strong anti-Chinese attitudes
that sometimes turned violent. The Chinese were willing to work for
lower wages than “whites” and were more reluctant to unionize, which
led U.S. labor leaders to label them “cheap working slaves.” NOTE
6 The result was virulent resentment. NOTE
7 White Americans claimed the Chinese were stealing their
jobs and draining the United States of gold by sending much of their
earnings back to relatives in China. Congress was pressured to investigate
these claims and by 1880 the U.S. government bowed to anti-Chinese sentiments
and signed a treaty with China permitting the United States to limit,
but not completely prohibit, Chinese immigration. NOTE
8 In 1882 there were 110,000 Chinese in the country. Congress
claimed that “the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers
the good order of certain localities” and on December 17, 1882, passed
the first Chinese Exclusion Act. The new law halted all immigration
of Chinese laborers NOTE 9
for 10 years and prohibited Chinese already residing in the United States
from obtaining citizenship. The 1882 Act was renewed in 1892 and made
permanent in 1902. The Immigration Act of 1917 expanded the prohibition
against immigrant laborers to nearly all Asian countries, including
the Middle East and India, creating “an Asiatic barred zone.”

“The Driving Out”

After passage of the 1882
Exclusion Act, there were many incidents of deadly violence perpetrated
against Chinese to force their removal from some counties, and Chinese
were segregated into quarters, known as “chinatowns” in cities. Chinese
workers bravely challenged the constitutionality of the 1882 and subsequent
Exclusion Acts, but the state, federal, and U.S. Supreme courts upheld
these discriminatory laws in cases such as Chae Chan Ping v. U.S. (1889)
and Fong Yue Ting v. U.S. (1893). This sad period became known as “The
Driving Out.” NOTE 10

Chinese immigrant women in
particular became the subject of exclusion in order to decrease the
size of the Chinese population in the United States. By 1890 the ratio
of Chinese men to women was 27 to 1. Chinese immigration to Hawaii was
totally halted in 1886. From 1908 to 1930 almost 73,000 Chinese departed
while only about 45,500 arrived. However, Japanese, Filipino, and Asian
Indians had to be recruited in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries
to replace Chinese laborers in U.S. fields and factories. The Chinese
American population on the U.S. mainland fell from 107,488 in 1890 to
61,639 in 1920. NOTE 11
By 1940, the number of mainland Chinese Americans had increased to only
77,504. NOTE 12

The discriminatory system
created to limit and control the Chinese population in the United States
left a vast paper trail, including civil, criminal, and admiralty court
cases, decrees, indictments, passports, photographs, subpoenas, and
transcripts of interrogations. In addition, Chinese immigrants in the
United States were required to carry “Certificates of Identity” at all
times. These documents are still housed in the files of the National
Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C. and 12
regional offices, and are a major source of information on Chinese American
family history. Some records, particularly those less than 75 years
old, are not yet publicly accessible because of privacy concerns. NOTE
13

Angel Island

Despite the Exclusion Acts,
immigration from China continued. The absence of legal channels for
immigration, coupled with an ongoing U.S. demand for unskilled labor,
resulted in an increase in undocumented Chinese immigration. The fires
which accompanied the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 destroyed
all of the family records kept by the U.S. Immigration Service. As a
result, many Chinese attempted to enter the United States by assuming
false identities. Since the children of American-citizen fathers could
enter the country legally, some Chinese immigrants bought falsified
documents to become “paper sons” or “paper daughters.” In 1910, a new
port of entry and detention center for screening immigrants was established
on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. Beginning in 1890, the island’s
740 acres were used as a quarantine station for the inspection and disinfection
of incoming foreign ships that might carry yellow fever, cholera, or
bubonic plague. Ten years later a military installation was added to
conduct health screenings of military recruits.

However, Angel Island is most
famous as the main entry point for immigrants from the Pacific. More
than 1 million people were processed through the Angel Island Immigration
Station between 1910 and 1940. For Chinese immigrants, the reception
was particularly hostile. An interrogation process to determine the
authenticity of their documentation was established by immigration authorities.
Chinese were detained for periods ranging from a few days or weeks to
months or even years while their eligibility to enter the United States
was determined. As a result, rather than earning a reputation as the
Ellis Island of the West, Angel Island became known among Immigration
Service officials as the “Guardian of the Western Gate.”

The fears and hopes of the 175,000
Chinese immigrants who passed through Angel Island are reflected in
the poetry many of them wrote in calligraphy on its barracks walls.
A fire destroyed the Immigration Station in 1940, but Angel Island was
still used as the main Pacific Coast detention camp for German prisoners
of war during World War II. It was abandoned at the end of the war and
fell into ruin. In the 1960s it was designated for destruction, but
some in the San Francisco Asian community lobbied the California State
Park system to protect the site as a cultural legacy. Some repair work
was done in the 1970s, but years of neglect to the interior have exposed
the wall writings to weathering and a full restoration has yet to be
done. NOTE 14 The Angel
Island Immigration Station was designated a National Historic Landmark
in 1997. In 2000, $15 million in state monies were promised to begin
the restoration process. In addition, a non-profit organization NOTE
15 was established to carry out the restoration and to educate
the public about the historical value of Angel Island as a testament
to the suffering and perseverance of immigrants such as the Chinese.

Today
is the last day of winter,
Tomorrow morning is the vernal equinox.
One year’s prospects have changed to another.
Sadness kills the person in the wooden building.NOTE
16

Lifting the Ban but
Continuing the Struggle

Restrictions on Chinese immigration
to the United States began to ease during the 1930s. Chinese wives who
were married to American citizens before May 26, 1924, were admitted
starting in 1930. In 1935, Public Law 162 granted several hundred Asian
veterans of World War I the right to apply for U.S. citizenship. In
World War II the United States found itself in a difficult struggle
with the Japanese in the Pacific theatre. The Japanese were quick to
point out that the Nationalist Chinese (R.O.C.) led by General Chiang
Kai-Shek were a major U.S. ally, but that the Chinese people were still
barred from immigrating to the United States. American popular support
for the old Chinese Exclusion Acts was further undermined through an
appeal made by U.S.-educated Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in a speech at the
Hollywood Bowl in California in 1943.

By October of that year President
Roosevelt publicly supported a number of legal actions to reward America’s
Asian allies. The Philippines was promised independence at the end of
the war, and Koreans living in the United States were exempted from
“enemy alien” status. On December 17, 1943, Congress repealed the Chinese
Exclusion Acts. NOTE 17
Chinese in the United States were allowed to naturalize and a new quota
of 105 Chinese immigrants per year was established under the rubric
of the National Origins System.

With the repeal of the Exclusion
Acts, over 60 years of systematic legal discrimination against the Chinese
ended. Although Chinese immigration resumed, the absurdly small quota
deliberately kept the number of immigrants very low until the 1965 Immigration
and Nationality Act abolished the quota system and prohibited discrimination
against immigrants on the basis of race, sex, nationality, place of
birth, or place of residence. This Act established annual quotas of
20,000 immigrants per country which allowed Chinese to enter together
as families for the first time in U.S. history.

Conclusion

From 1820 through 2003, 1,912,968
Chinese from the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.), Taiwan, and Hong
Kong immigrated to the United States. NOTE
18 In 2000, Chinese Americans numbered 2,879,636, comprising
1.02 percent of the U.S. population. NOTE
19 The Chinese are the largest Asian-American ethnic group
in the United States, and China ranks second (behind Mexico) as the
nation from which most new immigrants to the United States come. The
metropolitan areas of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut are now
the favorite destinations for Chinese immigrants, surpassing the historical
receiving cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. New “chinatowns”
are proliferating across the United States in the south and upper mid-west.
Many residents of these new chinatowns are wealthy professionals.

Far from taking jobs away
from native-born Americans, today’s Chinese immigrants are known for
creating jobs by investing their own capital in the garment, restaurant,
and other industries. Given that about one-third of Chinese immigrants
are college graduates, many are valued workers in mathematics, science,
and technology. Chinese Americans are justifiably proud of their contributions
to the U.S. economy and to the creation of a more just American society.
December 17th provides an opportunity for all Americans to recall the
inequities and sufferings endured by past generations of Chinese immigrants
and to recognize that the exclusionary and discriminatory policies of
the past must never be repeated.

3 Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. Department of Justice, 2000 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Table 3, p.24. This figure includes Chinese persons living in the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao.

9 Teachers, diplomats, tourists, merchants, and students were allowed entrance.

10 Chinese were forced out of Humboldt and Fresno counties, and nurseries and vineyards around Fresno. In the 1880s there was a 37 percent decline in California’s Chinese population. During this period the saying, “He doesn’t stand a Chinaman’s chance,” came into the American lexicon. www.apa.si.edu/ongoldmountain.

11 Chinese American Data Center, “Population Trend, Chinese American Population, 1850-2000.” These statistics do not include Hawaii and Alaska.

12 If Alaska and Hawaii are included, the Chinese American population in 1940 was 106,334 (Chinese American Data Center).

13 Exclusion Act-related immigrant documents from the old Chinese Service were transferred to the INS in 1903. These records were maintained separately until 1908, and now are referred to as Segregated Chinese Files, all of which are housed in Washington, DC. After 1908, records in a separate Chinese file series were housed in the Regional Archives around the country according to point of entry.